Loose Leaf

The Official Blog of American Forests

The True Cost of Forest Fires

A firefighter combats a dangerous blaze in the Rim Fire in the Stanislaus National Forest in August, 2013. Credit: US Department of Agriculture

As the world warms up, the struggle to raise the money to fight increasingly intense and more frequent forest fires continues. The rise in temperatures is causing trees to dry out, and fire-prone areas are already feeling the effects. Wildfires are burning stronger and longer, and the government is struggling to provide the funds to fight back. These fires have become a nightmare both for the officials struggling to find the funds to fight them as well as for the firefighters who work tirelessly to fight blazes that are burning more intensely than before.

The increasing threat of forest fires is directly reflected in the capital needed to fight them; before 1999, there was not a need to spend more than $1 billion per year on fire suppression, but since 2000, the budget for such efforts has been forced to steadily rise due to demand, and has topped $1.5 billion multiple times since 2006. This is a double-edged sword for the Forest Service, which is forced into “fire borrowing,” — taking funds from other programs to combat the fires that are destroying millions of acres of forests while simultaneously consuming millions of dollars. While these fires do need to be fought, this appropriation of funds takes away from other vital operations, such as reforestation efforts and research into new firefighting strategies, which work to reverse the negative effects of these devastating fires.